With a constant focus on the desire to decrease operating costs fueled in part by an increasing demand for qualified IT skills, there is pressure within today's corporate world to move the development, support and maintenance of software (Applications Development and Maintenance—also referred to as AD/M) to alternate locations, where the advantages of lower costs and significantly larger skills pools can be leveraged without sacrificing the quality of service provided.
The main catalysts that promote this kind of thinking are                improvements in communication technology bringing down the traditional barriers of distance        the availability of adequately IT skilled resources in global geographies        the urgent need to re deploy hard-to-obtain subject matter experts (SMEs) on other core projects or new business areas such as e-business and process reengineering        demands by the customer on the IT infrastructure to continually reduce development cycle times, thereby increasing the ‘speed to market.        
As of now there is no single comprehensive method or process available that allows for a foolproof decision making system that identifies the problem areas to achieve maximum success rate. It is more of a ‘hit-or-miss’ situation.